of hearts and keys
by Slytherin Cat
Summary: In a world where magic means everyone can see your soul, Lily Evans wonders what it would feel like if someone she loves opened her heart. AU-ish, Jily for Olivia.


_Word count:__ 3000_

**of hearts and keys**

**o.**

It's by the time she turns six that her parents notice the way she's always putting her hand around something they can't see around her neck.

She tells them it's nothing, just a silly old necklace she loves to fiddle with.

They exchange a worried look, but decide to let it go. For now.

After all, Lily is but a child, and as Emma likes to tell her husband, she used to have a couple of imaginary friends when she was younger. Obviously, Lily just inherited her imagination.

Somehow, though, this doesn't explain all the weird accidents happening around Lily, from the spontaneously blooming flowers to the objects coming to life when she feels particularly angry, which, thankfully, isn't a regular occurrence.

And so Lily's parents live on, unaware that their safe little world is about to be shaken, and that by none other than a small boy named Severus Snape and living next door.

_(you see, Severus is a wizard – but shh, it's a secret)_

**i.**

Lily's at the playground with her sister when she first sees Severus.

She immediately knows he's just like her – special. She can feel it. He's just got that sort of aura, the like of she's never seen or felt before, and there's the way his right hand keeps inching up to his neck to touch something invisible resting there.

She knows that move; because it's the one she does every day when she feels uncomfortable or worried, or just particularly happy.

She wonders for a while if she should go and meet him, talk to him and maybe finally get the answers to the questions that plague her when she allows herself to think about the heart-shaped pendant around her neck.

That pendant's always been there, and sometimes when she holds it at night after a nightmare, she can almost feel it beat in rhythm with the heart in her chest, pumping her body with something infinitely sweeter than blood and that almost feels like magic.

In the end, though, she doesn't – maybe she's too scared of what he might tell her, maybe she just wants to think that she's normal and that everything's fine in her life _(except that her mind's screaming at her that he's like her, and that she should ask him those questions she desperately wants answered before he leaves and she never sees him again)_.

So when Severus actually makes the first move when she had decided not to go bother him and hope he didn't notice her, she's understandably startled.

Unfortunately, she doesn't have the time to talk to him because Petunia comes back from whatever part of the playground she went to with such a scowl on her face that Lily knows it's not a good idea to linger around here any longer.

It's a shame, really, that her parents only allow her to come with her sister.

She sends him an apologetic look as she hurries to follow her sister, hoping he'll understand and that she'll have another chance to understand what's happening to her.

Apparently he understood, because the next day he turns up on her doorstep and introduces himself as Severus Snape.

_(from that day on, Lily's sure they're going to be the best friends ever)_

**iii.**

"You're a witch, Lily," he says when she asks him by the riverside if there's a reason why they wear their souls around their necks for everyone to see. "My mum told me that once we were like everyone else, but that we were cursed – or blessed, it depends on the version, and I don't think anyone quite knows what happened – to always show who we truly were to the whole world."

"This," he said, pointing to the ornate silver key around his neck, "is normal for us. I'm not sure if we have magic because of them, or if we have them because of magic, but it's there and we have to live with it, you see."

She doesn't, not really – not yet – but she nods anyway.

He weaves for her tales of magical creatures, and of a castle that really is a school and that she'll live in one day, of great wars long past and of the powers she'll be able to use to shape her own future the way she sees fit.

And sometimes, he even tells her of soulmates, the ones fated to be together, who can use their keys and unlock hearts.

It sounds wonderful, and Lily wonders what it'd be like to have someone unlock her heart. What would happen then, how would it feel?

**iv.**

Hogwarts is beautiful, and the Gryffindors dorms even more so. It's a shame she can't share those with Severus, but her friend has clearly always been made for Slytherin in a way she kind of envied, and it's not like she won't ever see him again.

There may be some kind of stupid rivalry between their two houses, but they have known each other for too long for them to let something as trivial as other people's expectations get between them.

No, Hogwarts is almost the paradise she pictured in her mind after all of Severus' tales – almost, but for one thing, or rather one person.

James Potter, the arrogant toerag who thinks himself better than everyone else, and who for some reason targeted Severus as soon as he saw him.

She already knows they won't get on well, despite whatever crazy dreams that boy might have and even if her hearts warms at the thought of him.

**v.**

It takes Lily a single week to realize that she was made for this life. Every time she casts a spell, her blood sings in her veins and her heart thrums against her chest – it's as if her soul welcomes her home, and it is a wonderful feeling.

With a single word and a wave of her wand, she can do things she once thought were impossible: make objects fly, transform wood into steel and back, heal wounds or break bones.

It's a bit overwhelming at times, but she wouldn't trade it for the world.

She wishes her sister was there with her, but then again, it has been a while since she last shared anything really important with Petunia.

'Maybe it's better this way,' whispers a little voice at the back of her mind when she lies on her bed at night and misses her family, 'after all, you've never really been honest with her.'

'You never told her about it,' it says as her hand rests on the locket on her chest that beats in rhythm with her heart.

She tries to ignore those words, but the thing is that they're all so true it hurts.

So, yes Hogwarts is beautiful – wonderful even – and magical, but she doesn't remember needing a conscience so much before she ran through a wall to join another world.

**vi.**

In History of Magic, she learns that wizards are the only one to have been blessed with 'visible souls' as the teacher calls it, and Lily can't help but remember the words of a boy growing more and more distant with each passing day, said once upon a time by the riverside: _'No one knows whether to call it a blessing or a curse.' _

She rather thinks he was right and that this ghost is trying to convince them of a truth even he doubts of – it's in the way his hand keeps reaching up to a bare neck that shouldn't seem as chilling as it does even though he is long dead.

She wonders if all wizards are the same, believing themselves to be blessed because the alternative is just too grim to think about.

And she thinks of Severus, who only talks of his father with hatred and already is so bitter with his key a tarnished silver, of Remus who always is so kind and hides a battered soul behind shirts that have seen better days.

She thinks of her own soul, of the way it used to shine like diamonds when she was young and the way it is now, its soft glimmer the color of the tears she shed when her sister told her she never wanted to see her again.

Maybe thinking themselves blesses is the only way they can keep going.

**vii.**

"Hey Lily-flower, will you go out with me?"

She doesn't even need to look up to know that Potter is the one talking. It seems that these last months the only thing he can think about is making her life hell by finding the most annoying way to ask her out when she last expects it.

Last week she was showered in red roses' petals when she stepped out of her dorms, and while she loves the smell of roses, there's only one slight problem with this – she's allergic to flowers. Honestly, it's a wonder he never noticed, what with his creepy obsession with her, that she never studied the flowers in Herbology.

"Come on Evans, don't be such an Ice Queen, I know you like me."

James Potter is an obnoxious prat, and she sure as hell doesn't like him.

Even if the way he smiles kind of makes her want to smile too.

She raises an eyebrows and smiles. It's a little too sweet to be true but she wouldn't have it any other way. "Let me make this very simple for you. I don't like you, and in case you still haven't understood, I never will.

"You're childish, stupid and nothing more than a schoolyard bully. In case you haven't noticed, there's a war outside, and one day we'll leave this place and we won't be safe anymore. What we learn here is important, and you ridicule this chance we have – and it might be our only chance to actually learn what we need to survive out there – by playing stupid pranks and hurting anyone you think different.

"And you know what, Potter? In a way, this doesn't make you any different from the Death Eaters you so claim to hate, and who hate us Muggleborns because of who we are. And don't think Severus hasn't told me what happened that night."

As she exits the common room she also leaves behind gaping students and a raging James Potter, who might just be realizing that he pushed her too far – after all, in the last five years they all learned how much of a temper Lily Evans could have, and those were words she had been holding back for quite a while.

She can't bring herself to regret them, because while they were hurtful – they were meant to, after all – they also were true, and it was high time someone opened James' eyes to the world.

And then she remembers the flash of pain in the brown orbs gazing at her when she said those words, and she kind of feels guilty, even though she shouldn't.

Her heart feels cold against her chest, and she wonders if she might have not just lost something precious.

**viii.**

James avoids her like the plague after that, and she should feel relieved.

Instead she feels a little bit lost, like she's missing something she never knew she had and took for granted for the longest time.

Her heart throbs with an ache she can't explain, and she doesn't know what to do.

Severus would never understand, he hates James – and when did he become James in her mind? – and he certainly has his reasons. Anyway, it's not like they talk much these days. He tries, as does she to keep their friendship alive but there's something about the company he keeps, something about the way he hides his soul now that makes her wonder what she would see if she asked him to show it to her like he did when they were both children.

Is he even still the same boy who was her best friend?

This is not a question she wants to answer.

Her friends – Amelia, Alice – wouldn't be much help either. They had never really understood her disdain for James Potter, and she knew they would only confuse her more than she already was.

Remus was too close to the problem to be of any help, and she wouldn't have asked him to try to understand what was going on in her mind anyway.

"He'll get over it, my lady. If he truly cares for you, like he says he does, then he'll forgive you. After all, you had the best intentions, and in time he will come to see it," tells her a knight, forever immortal on the wall, as she passes through the corridors - because evidently, at Hogwarts, painting can talk, and more than that, they gossip like old ladies.

She figures it must be boring to hang off a wall, always seeing the same details every day but for the passing students who never really care for their surroundings. It raises the thought of just how conscious those figures of oil and canvas are, and if they can truly feel time in the way living people do.

She pities them if they do.

And all of this is why she's not surprised by the painting's words, and instead nods her thanks – alive or not, that knight gave good advice, usually.

She muses on his words for the next hour, and when she wakes up the next day, the weight around her neck feels just that tiny bit lighter.

Surely he will forgive her for her harsh words.

**ix.**

She doesn't quite know when she starts admitting to herself that she might actually like James.

It comes to her the way all the life-changing revelations do: slowly and sneakily, taking root in her heart and in her soul bit by bit until she can't remember a day when things were different, and can't imagine another future.

She thinks it began after she Severus went back on everything he promised _(to always be friends)_, but then she remembers a sunny day in Third Year when he spent two hours helping her find a lost pet for a little Hufflepuff girl, and wonders if she might not have been deluding herself for longer than she thought.

She remembers yelling at him to stop being such a child when she was barely older than he was, and how barely a year after he aged beyond his years as he learned of his parents' murders.

He changed, but then again so did she – she's been changing ever since she learned about magic and the truth of their souls – and they have already seen more of the evil of men than most of the adults she knows.

One day he asks her out on a day, in something that has become a long standing joke – she can tell he doesn't believe she will ever say yes anymore - and she gets to cherish the look on his face when she finally agrees to spend the next Hogsmeade weekend with him.

Her heart beats so fast it seems it's trying to get out of her chest and the locket around her neck feels so light she wouldn't feel it if not for the warmth it emanates.

This is the happiest she's felt in months.

**x.**

They leave Hogwarts to join a world at war with itself, and she has to watch as friends turn their back on friends and brothers stab each other in the back.

The world is falling apart around them and the fight seems almost hopeless, except that her father once told her – back when he was still alive and knew just the right word to reassure his little girl, before magic and lies and cursed souls that never were blessed – that hope is never lost while someone still fights for it.

So she fights, and James fights beside her, and beside him stand Sirius, Peter and Remus, and the whole of the Order.

Her soul never felt so weary, hanging around her neck like an anvil keeping her anchored to a crumbling ground, but it looks beautiful in the way precious things do.

James loves it - loves her really – and he tells her every chance he gets.

One night, he builds her a castle of snow and ice and put a fallen star on her finger, and she tells him she'll spend the rest of her life with him.

It turns out that they don't have long – a Prophecy is made, they go in hiding and on what should be the darkest night of the year, a Dark Lord comes knocking at their door.

And it is their end, but also the beginning of another story – the story of their son, Harry, who has his whole life ahead of him.

**+i.**

They lie in bed all night under the covers, giggling like teenagers when she whispers to James that she's always wondered what it would be like for someone to open her heart.

He smiles this wonderful smile – the one she's always secretly loved and that makes her toes curl when it's directed at her – and instants later an ornate golden key unlocks the silver heart that beats in rhythm with hers.

Her world burns and freezes at the same time, and somewhere she thinks 'so, this is what love truly feels like' and 'I never want to let this go'.

She turns her head and James is beside her, and she knows they share the same reverent expression.

They learned something tonight, something simultaneously the most important thing in the world and the most insignificant: they are in this together.

They fall asleep to the sound of two hearts beating in unison, to the feeling of two souls so in tune with each other they could very well be two parts of a whole, and Lily's last thought is a prayer for this never to end.

**AN/**

**Considering I've had the idea for this over a year ago, this took an unfair amount of time to write, but I couldn't quite get it right… Now that I'm finally happy with how it turned out, I'm posting it. Sorry Olivia that this took so long but I hope you liked this anyway.**

**I have a couple of other ideas for this verse, so I might write a few other stories in it… Even if this is probably one of the weirdest thing I've written, I quite liked it and it makes me wonder what else I could do with the 'visible souls' bit.**

**Anyway, I hope you enjoyed this. Please leave a review on your way out to let me know what you thought.**


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